Even if Democrats lose the Jan. 19 special election to pick a new Massachusetts senator, Congress may still pass a health-care overhaul by using a process called reconciliation, a top House Democrat said.
That procedure requires 51 votes rather than the 60 needed to prevent Republicans from blocking votes on President Barack Obama’s top legislative priorities. That supermajority is at risk as the Massachusetts race has tightened.
“Even before Massachusetts and that race was on the radar screen, we prepared for the process of using reconciliation,” said Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Getting health-care reform passed is important,” Van Hollen said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend. “Reconciliation is an option.”
A process the Democrats vilified when the Republicans were in charge. However, I don’t recall the Republicans actually using or even threatening to use when they were in power.
As a friend of mine said, if they do use ‘Reconciliation’ they pretty much signal their doom as a party in power, since the ‘transparency’ promised by the President has not appeared, and in fact, the back room, closed door meetings have INCREASED under this administration. The people are getting fed up with this type of manipulation.
[blockquote]The democrats have to stick to the 60-vote filibuster rule on healthcare, if for no other reason than because an alienated electorate could give the Senate to the Republicans this fall; and then Republicans could say that turnabout is fair play on every single bill that went through for the next several years.[/blockquote]
They won’t though because, say what you will about the Republicans, they do have quite a bit of a sense of ‘fair-play’ even to the extent that it hurts them politically.
Jim Elliott
Florida
The other game they are planning to play is to delay seating the Republican if he wins and to claim the Democrat presently temporarily holding the seat will continue to have the power to vote, even though his power to act as senator legally ends the day after the vote.
Republicans used reconciliation three times in George Bush’s eight years. However, each time they did so on budget matters, which is within the rules of the Senate. What Harry Reid is proposing has no basis in Senate rules whatsoever.
Our present hodge poge health care system delivers the worst health care outcome for our citizens at the highest cost of any of the advanced countries of the world. If we fail to reform it, it will be a signal to the world that we cannot solve this problem and cannot compete on the world stage in this area. It brings into question what other areas we cannot compete in and will we remain an advanced country?
“Our present hodge poge [sic] health care system delivers the worst health care outcome for our citizens at the highest cost of any of the advanced countries of the world. If we fail to reform it, it will be a signal to the world that we cannot solve this problem and cannot compete on the world stage in this area.”
This is nonsense. What measures does “little searchers” use for our health care. I can tell you that I would rather be in the U.S. than any other country if I had cancer or I had a sick infant. The present “solutions” that are being merged by stealth in the back rooms of Congress take broken systems (Medicare and Medicaid) and expand them which will only speed their eminent demise.
[blockquote]This is nonsense. What measures does “little searchers†use for our health care. I can tell you that I would rather be in the U.S. than any other country if I had cancer or I had a sick infant [/blockquote]
I am not sure I understand your point. 60% of US cancer patients are on Medicare, so government health care is already providing most of the cancer care in the US. What is the sick infant statistic you are using? US infant mortality rates are very high compared to Western Europe.
Mitchell,
Infant mortality rate comparisons cross-countries are pointless and irrelevant as the criteria for reporting live births and birth weights very from country to country. Further, each country also has a different way of measuring “life.” Premature infants born alive which die are counted not as “live births” but as “still births.”
There has been plenty of work in pointing out these stats irrelevance over here at T19; here are the relevant comments that address the cross-country issues.
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http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/10469/#192493
The better way to judge the quality of healthcare:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/print_w_comments/18718/#313850